Matouk Mohammed Matouk was awarded a degree by a British university two years
after he allegedly orchestrated the murder of WPc Yvonne Fletcher, it has
emerged.

Mr Matouk enrolled on an architecture course at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University in 1982 in a department headed by Prof Sir James Dunbar-Nasmith, the Queen’s architect at Balmoral.

Two years later, he was a leading member of a “students’ committee” that took over the Libyan Embassy in London before WPc Fletcher’s shooting. He was deported after an 11-day siege that followed the murder and is now suspected of directing the students to open fire.

Despite his deportation, he continued to correspond with his tutor at Heriot-Watt, who described his disappearance as “most unfortunate”, submitted a dissertation and graduated in absentia with an MSc in urban design in July 1986.

Letters from his tutor, Robert Smart, were among documents abandoned by Mr Matouk, the former head of Gaddafi’s nuclear weapons programme, when he fled his home in Tripoli last month.

The papers show that Mr Matouk moved to Edinburgh with his wife and two young daughters when he was in his late 20s in September 1982 after completing a summer course at the Coventry International English Studies Centre.

Having been granted a student visa, he spent the next 18 months studying urban design, but was also holding regular meetings with other ultra-loyal Gaddafi fanatics. In February 1984 he travelled to London as one of those ordered by Gaddafi to take over the Libyan Embassy from professional diplomats. WPc Fletcher was murdered on April 17, 1984, and Matouk was deported later the same month, but his tutor appears to have been unaware of the reason he had abandoned his studies. Mr Smart wrote to him on May 25, 1984, saying: “We are sorry you disappeared recently from the course. Most unfortunate!”

The letter discusses his dissertation and asks him to re-submit it, with corrections, by that September, and ends: “I hope your wife is keeping well and the children are all thriving.”

On Jan 10, 1985, Mr Smart wrote: “I have now been through your dissertation … some of the writing could be better … the early pages on gaming are a bit of a bore.” He adds: “It is a little difficult to deal with minor points at this distance … try to get it to me by mid-April. I can then get the external examiner plenty of time to read it.” The letter ends: “Best wishes for the New Year.”

Heriot-Watt University confirmed that Mr Matouk graduated in 1986. The head of the architecture department at the time, whose name appears on the letterheads, was Sir James Dunbar-Nasmith, the architect who was hired by the Queen to develop Sunninghill, the former marital home of the Duke and Duchess of York, and whose other commissions include work on the Balmoral Estate. Neither Sir James nor Mr Smart were available for comment last night.